Joey Payeur
It was the perfect time for a time-out.
Muskie boys’ curling coach Ron Silver gathered his troops for an urgent pep talk after the team gave up a three-ender and a deuce to trail the Bishop Allen Cardinals (Etobicoke) 5-0 after just two ends.
“We just came out in the third and said, ‘Enough of this,’” said Silver.
What followed was a complete turnaround for skip Chris Silver, third Daniel Vandenbrand, second Jason Bazylewski, and lead Davis Jackson, who scored eight of the last nine points for a thrilling 8-6 victory yesterday afternoon to move to 2-0 and remain tied for first in Pool ‘D’ at the OFSAA championships in North Bay.
Bishop Allen (0-3) was the top-ranked team in the pool entering the competition, with Fort High seeded second.
The Cardinals looked nothing like their seeding in their first two games, being outscored 14-4, but appeared to be back in form early on against the Muskies.
“We had a few misses and the other team was on fire the first couple of ends,” noted Ron Silver.
“But we caught a break in the third and had a wide-open draw for three, and then the guys just kept plugging away,” he added.
“It’s a huge win for their confidence.”
Fort High opened play Monday with a 5-4 win over the third-seeded Frank J. Hayden Huskies (Burlington).
The black-and-gold were up 5-3 entering the last end but with the Huskies (1-1) holding last-rock advantage.
But Silver’s team positioned its stones well enough to leave the Huskies with nothing but a difficult tap-back to try and score a pair to force an extra end.
The Burlington skip’s effort wasn’t solid enough, however, giving him only a single.
The Muskies faced the fifth-ranked Vincent Massey Mustangs (Windsor) last night, with a win virtually guaranteeing a top-two finish in the pool and a trip to the quarter-finals this afternoon.
Then they closed out pool play earlier today against the fourth-seeded Richview Saints (Etobicoke), who also won their first two games.
It’s a different story in girls’ action, where the playoffs looked to be a long shot for Muskie skip Erin Tomalty and her rink of third Tory Beaudry, second Anika Beaudry, and lead Andrea Schram following back-to-back losses that left them at 1-2.
Ranked first in Pool ‘E,’ Fort High won its first game 10-4 over the fourth-seeded Markham Marauders on Monday morning.
Then looking for a double-win day, the Muskies instead ran into the third-ranked Lawrence Park Panthers of Toronto (3-0), who cruised to a 10-1 win that night.
“We had done the all-day bus ride on Sunday, and though we got a good sleep on Sunday night when we arrived, we really didn’t sleep that much on the bus on the way down,” noted Muskie girls’ coach Kim Beaudry.
“By Monday night, we were starting to feel that bus ride,” she added.
“It didn’t help that the Panthers were skipped by Courtney Auld, who just got finished representing Ontario at the Canadian junior championships in Stratford in late January.”
Trying to bounce back yesterday, the Muskies were dumped 8-1 by the second-ranked Haliburton Highlands Red Hawks (1-1).
“Our problem both [Monday] night and [yesterday] was getting our weight down,” Kim Beaudry said.
“In both games, it was just a couple of shots that were game-changers.
“It’s that point swing,” she stressed. “You either make the shot and get those points, or you miss it and the other team does.”
The Muskies needed to win their final pool game earlier today against the fifth-seeded Maxwell Heights Marauders, and hope for help from some other teams, to get into a possible tie-breaker scenario.
The girls’ quarter-finals go tonight at 7:30 p.m.
The semi-finals for both the girls and boys go tomorrow morning, with the respective finals set for that afternoon.